Can you imagine Boise State playing for the national championship next season?

OK, it's a long shot, but few believed Boise State could upset Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl and fewer expected Utah to beat Alabama decisively in this year's Sugar Bowl.

The Utes' rise to No. 2 in the final Associated Press rankings, and the fact that it received 16 No. 1 votes in the AP poll, suggest we are a lot closer to a team from a non-BCS conference winning the grand prize than we thought.

The problem for such schools has been reputation and preseason ranking. No non-BCS team has been ranked higher than 15th in the preseason AP poll since college football began attempting to match the Nos. 1 and 2 teams at season's end in 1992. And because poll voters generally downgrade the accomplishments and schedule of non-BCS schools, those teams have a steep mountain to climb to reach a top-two spot at the end of the regular season.

No team unranked in preseason has ever played in a national championship game, but Utah got all the way to No. 2 in the final AP poll after starting unranked. Perhaps more significant is that Texas Christian ended up No. 7 despite having two losses and being left out of the Top 25 for the first three weeks.

Meanwhile, Brigham Young is helping to dispose of the "They didn't play anybody" complaint by playing Oklahoma and Florida State next season.

Which brings us to Boise State. The Broncos will start next season ranked somewhere around No. 15, and they open with a home game against Oregon, which also should be ranked. If Boise State wins that game (and the Broncos are 19-0 at home when ranked) and goes through the regular season unbeaten (as it has three of the past four seasons) and if no more than one team from BCS conference goes unbeaten (as has been the case the past three seasons), then ... well, you can see where this is going.

What we learned from the 2008 season:

Quarterbacks rule: Each year, the role of the quarterback becomes more important to a team's success. Now a team cannot win the national championship without an elite quarterback - as Alabama learned. Rank the quarterbacks and it pretty closely will parallel the team rankings. It has become nearly impossible for a position other than quarterback to win the Heisman Trophy, and the talent at quarterback next season could be the best ever.

USC rules: The Trojans finished ranked in the top four for the seventh consecutive season, a significant achievement when dynasties are presumed dead, but still a long way from Florida State's 13 straight top-four finishes, 1987-99.

Florida rules: The Gators should be an overwhelming choice as the 2009 preseason No. 1 and will have a chance to win a third national title in four years, which has been accomplished only twice since the AP began ranking teams in 1936 - Notre Dame (1946, '47 and '49) and Nebraska (1994, '95 and sharing the 1997 title).

Coaches rule:Steve Sarkisian, who is 34 and has not been a head coach, will get a guaranteed $1.85 million a year as Washington's head coach, about the same as Jeff Tedford's guaranteed income at Cal. Lane Kiffin, who is 33 and was fired for insubordination after going 5-15 in his only head-coaching job, will make about $2 million at Tennessee next year. The payback is that they can get fired or forced to resign even if they win - as Tennessee' Phillip Fulmer(national title in 1998), Auburn's Tommy Tuberville(13-0 in 2004) and Clemson's Tommy Bowden(no losing seasons in 9 1/2 years as Tigers' head coach) can tell you. Oklahoma's Bob Stoops - who reportedly earned more than $6 million this year, including a $3 million bonus for staying at Oklahoma for 10 years - is taking heat because of his failures in national title games even though he won the 2000 national championship.

The SEC rules: The Southeastern Conference has won three straight BCS national titles and five overall. The Big 12 has won two, and no other conference has won more than one. The much-hyped Big 12 South was exposed in the postseason, with Texas Tech, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma losing bowl games and Texas needing a last-minute score to beat Ohio State. The Pac-10 went 5-0 in bowls, but also went 2-6 against Mountain West teams throughout the season.

The BCS rules: There is no serious talk of a playoff among the people who matter, and there probably won't be until at least 2014, when ESPN's new contract with the BCS expires.